1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to technology of controlling the progress of a baseball game where a batter character hits a ball object that is pitched by a pitcher character.
2. Description of the Related Art
Conventionally, known is a baseball game where an outline box showing a strike zone is displayed on a display screen, and the batter character hits the ball object that was pitched by the pitcher character toward a strike zone.
In recent baseball games, there are those which give each batter a hitting zone where that batter is skilled at hitting and a hitting zone where that batter is not so skilled at hitting as in real baseball. For example, a batter may be skilled at hitting high and inside, but not so skilled at hitting low and outside.
As this type of game, for example, proposed is a game which displays a ball meeting zone (hereinafter referred to as the “ball meeting cursor”) of the bat cursor displayed within the strike zone to be a large size around the hitting zone where the batter character is skilled at hitting, and to be a small size around the hitting zone where the batter character is not so skilled at hitting (refer to JP2006-246968). A ball meeting cursor is used for the batter character to hit the ball object. When the game player performs a predetermined operation when the ball meeting cursor is overlapped with the ball object, it is determined that the batter character was able to hit the ball object.
Accordingly, since it becomes easier to overlap with the ball object as the size of the ball meeting cursor becomes larger, the skillfulness or unskillfulness of the batter character for each hitting zone is reflected in game, and the amusement as a baseball game will increase.
Nevertheless, as the game player becomes familiar with the batting operation of this kind of baseball game, that game player will be able to overlap the ball meeting cursor with the ball object even when the size of the ball meeting cursor is small size, and in many cases that game player will be able to hit the ball object relatively easily even in a hitting zone where that the batter character is not skilled at hitting.
In other words, there were cases where it was difficult to reflect the skillfulness or unskillfulness of the batter character for each hitting zone in the game.